Doctors - the cure for daytime tele?

Daytime television is the pit in which every untalented cretin that ever insulted a combination of our senses is flung and forced upon us in waves of repetitive, badly written nonsense. This aside, there is the occasional gem that appears in this mist of dirge and one of these is Doctors.

For those who aren't University students Doctors is a soap based in the Midlands at a Uni surgery in the fictional town of Leatherbridge and is shown Monday to Friday at lunchtime. It's location in a doctor's surgery allows the writers to create entertaining semi-permanent and cameo characters which give more variety than watching the same people sleep with each other in mainstays of misery Coronation Street and Eastenders, and the characters who do hold major parts actually hold some joy in their lives which no doubt cheers the viewers up after the BBC news.

It's crap yes, but it's enjoyable crap which is surprisingly well acted and well written considering its budget compared to the bigger shows in this genre of television and the creators aren't afraid to take risks, stepping away from the copycat nature of soaps and gently scratching the surface of bigger issues.

So there you have it: a British soap that interjects some humour into proceedings, and is of a higher quality than any of the Aussie imports. It's funny, quirky and a brilliant little guilty pleasure that shows it's not all affairs, murder and tram crashes.

The Grudge (Ju-on) - Boredom, weakly disguised as scares

This, like a lot of the original Japanese horrors which have been raped and pillaged by Hollywood, is held in high regard among cinephiles and having heard a lot about it, including the outrageous claim that it is scarier than Ringu, I decided to rent it. It was late when I put the DVD in and I sat on the bed with my girlfriend waiting to be scared, and we were...by the menu screen.

That was the most scared we got. The screams and jolting images of ghosts on the main menu pretty much disappeared and we stepped into an hour and a half of sheer boredom. Sure it starts promisingly enough, with the first segment been genuinely creepy as the first of the female horror fodder catches glimpses of the spirits in an old woman's house, then it rapidly grows repetitive as pretty much exactly the same thing happens to various other people. Literally the only difference is that sometimes a black mist takes them instead of a blue little shit, or that whining blue bint and the whole thing becomes yawn worthy.

I don't expect jump of your seat thrills, or full on gore. Ringu didn't work because of that one climatic scene, Ringu worked because it took it's time building a true sense of dread which made the final, fairly simple scare all the more effective. It's a root that some of the best horrors have taken; films like: Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man and Audition. Films that a simple scare and repeat it like Ju-on include: the Halloween sequels, the Friday the 13th sequels, and any Scream rip off from the late nineties.

Honestly, which category has the better selection? If you think it's the second then this blog might disappoint you in the long run.

Avatar - Cameron blows the budget once again

James Cameron has an amazing ability. I'm not talking about his ability to make huge blockbusters because let's face it; we know he can do that. I'm talking about his ability to take what should be an epic story with a big meaning and reducing it down to an underwritten, overly clichéd love story. I mean look at the film he did before Avatar, you know that one about some ship sinking. He took one of the most tragic, non wartime disasters and made it all about two people with some overly sentimental, Spielberg-esque bookmarks to really drive the nail in.

Twelve years later and he takes what could have been a powerful film about our attitudes towards other cultures and the environment and then smeared the same shitty love story that dominated Titanic all over it. I'm surprised he didn't add a side story to Aliens where Sigourney Weaver and Paul Reiser fall in love despite their different lifestyles. That's basically what both Titanic and Avatar are; two people from completely different worlds (Avatar literally, Titanic metaphorically) thrust violently together, with some heartstring pulling added in, while the story Cameron should have been telling is thrown to the side like a technophile's outdated iPad.

Now I know what you're all thinking. You're all thinking that I'm crazy. That Avatar can't have been that bad because it's the highest grossing film ever. That it looks so beautiful and that Cameron created whole new ways of filming to put his vision into action and that it got nominated for NINE Oscars.

I put it to you that Oscars do not always mean quality (and besides that it only won three of the fucking things, none of which are any representation of quality, more a representation of how it looks). Secondly, since Cameron had been working on this turgid, overlong cliché for nearly fifteen years you'd have thought he could a written a story that resembled something original, or at least could have thrown some of that 200 million at a screenwriter.

Style over substance might work for balls out action films, but when you're trying to make a point with your films you need a little more substance than boy-meets-girl...